


Ouroborus:  The Beginning of the End

by White Aster (white_aster)



Series: Ouroborus [1]
Category: Suikoden III
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-03-13
Updated: 2004-03-13
Packaged: 2017-10-03 03:36:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/white_aster/pseuds/White%20Aster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Albert has a bad day, Yuber has a bad day, Pesmerga has a bad day, and then the Eightfold Rune has a really GOOD day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ouroborus:  The Beginning of the End

I had a bad feeling about the battle from the start.

I could give all the tactical reasons: how the hills to the east hadn't been properly scouted, how we had one less division than I'd been promised, how there had been some suspicious movement in the night that hadn't been explained to my satisfaction. But the truth was that, as I looked out on the battlelines in the morning, the sound of men and readying arms floating up to me, something just didn't feel right. Something in the air, borne on the angry grey clouds that piled on the horizon.

My eyes combed through the ranks, over cavalry and archers and into the infantry. Arms folded across his chest, his braid a slash of gold down his back, he was a black hole in the sea of blue uniforms and silver helmets. The column behind him shifted nervously, as the men he led usually did. He had a mixed reputation among the soldiers: a ferocious warrior and an occasionally inspired battlefield commander, the men had nonetheless noticed that he cared more about winning the battle and, ultimately, killing than about them. Not to mention he had been known to raise the bodies of fallen friend and foe alike into undead fighters when needed.

Yuber turned from contemplating the enemy massing across the battlefield. With the distance between us, it was hard to tell, but I thought I saw him grin before the trumpets sounded and he turned away. His blades flashed into his hands as the sound of drawn steel and shouting voices and pounded dirt filled the air. He was away like a shot, and I could see that the first blood of the day was drawn by his steel.

His good cheer didn't reassure me.

Lightning flashed on the horizon as the lines clashed, thunder rumbling over the battlefield.

*********

I was, of course, right. The rain came an hour into the battle, and my cavalry became all but useless in the ensuing quagmire of mud and blood that covered the battlefield. The enemy pressed forward aggressively and were only beaten back at great cost to several divisions.

At noon, enemy reinforcements flooded out of the hills I'd been so worried about, striking hard at an exposed flank of my forces, and even the Chaosbearer's infantry couldn't hold them back. By mid-afternoon, with half my troops dead and now hopelessly outnumbered, I called for a full retreat and could only join the Harmonians in running for their lives.

It only got worse, as the enemy was bent on pursuing us and apparently knew who I was on sight. I never had to fight so hard in a retreat in my life, and the first half hour I was saved by luck more than skill. Fighting, after all, was not my specialty. Neither was running, and by dusk I was exhausted, the clutch of Harmonian infantry I'd fallen in with equally tired and most of them wounded.

That was exactly why we fared so badly when the enemy fell upon us.

They came swiftly from behind, cutting down a handful of the wounded Harmonians before they could even raise their weapons. In the twilight, I could barely see who was friend or foe and attempted to back into the trees before I could be seen. My luck, however, had apparently run out, two of them engaging me with longswords before I could escape. I ducked the first swing and felt the second's thrust graze against my side in a hot line. I slashed at his sword arm with my short sword and felt it connect, heard a cry of pain, but the other enemy was coming at me from the side. He was much too close, and I backpedalled furiously, catching his stroke in my arm and feeling the blade bite deep, pain exploding against the bone as I tripped over something in the growing dark. I rolled as I hit the ground, expecting to feel a blade slide between my ribs before I could get up. By the time I gained my feet, though, breathing hard through the pain in my arm, there was only one figure standing there, a black shadow against the fading sunset. He turned his head, and the dying light flared over blonde hair, sliding over two blood-stained blades. "Yuber." I had never in my life been so glad to see him. Always a tricky thing, assuming that he didn't mean me harm, but at that point at least he was more likely to be friend than foe.

He smiled, and as he came towards me, stepping over the body of one of my attackers, I could see a spray of blood over the side of his face. "You run like a jackrabbit, Silverberg."

"People trying to kill me is quite inspiring," I murmured, eyes trying to pick out where the rest of the ambushers may have gotten to.

"I killed most of--" He stopped, head lifting like a hunting hound, eyes scanning to the west, the direction from which we came.

"What's--" I started to ask quietly, but shut up when he slashed irritably in my direction with one of his blades. I settled my sword in my hand. Anything that would frighten Yuber was likely to have me for dinner, but it was the principle of the thing.

A voice slid out of the darkness, surprisingly close, even though I'd heard no footsteps. "Yuber."

I glanced over in time to see Yuber's eyes narrow, though they were still combing the trees. He, evidently, had as little luck seeing the speaker as I did. Yuber's mouth twisted in a smirk. "Show yourself. Or have you given up that honor you so cherish in favor of striking from the dark like an assassin?"

Yuber turned sharply, seeing the man enter the small clearing before I did. In the low light, I could only make out dark armor, a horned, visored helmet, and a long line of unsheathed broadsword. Yuber pivoted to face him, his blades coming up, his voice mocking, "Think you can take me, then? It's been awhile. Had trouble finding me, did you?"

The man's head turned to me, his voice flat and resonating oddly through is helmet. "Albert Silverberg. I have no quarrel with you, but if you interfere, I will kill you."

Yuber took the man's divided attention as an opportunity to strike, blades flashing down in the last light. As the armored man -- probably Pesmerga, my mind helpfully supplied, the mysterious armored man who had hunted Yuber for years across the face of the world -- parried and the two engaged with a rather awe-inspiring amount of skill, I hesitated. Injured, I would likely be dead by morning on my own. But if Yuber won--

The fight was over so quickly that I never had time to make my decision. There was a sharp crack as one of Yuber's blades cracked under the heavy broadsword's blow, a good two feel of blade flying off into the shadows. Yuber was thrown off-balance by the incomplete parry, and Pesmerga's kick at his knee sent him to the ground with a curse. He scrambled to get to his feet, and from my angle, with the armored man between me and Yuber, there was a flurry of movement that I couldn't see properly. I heard quite clearly Yuber's scream of pain, though, as Pesmerga stabbed his broadsword down with both hands.

My breath caught in my chest as Pesmerga sidestepped a bit, and I could see. His sword was driven through Yuber's right palm, pinning him to the ground. Yuber's unbroken sword lay several feet away, out of reach. Pesmerga's voice was as flat and cold as an iced lake. "No escape this time, Chaosbearer."

Yuber snarled at him ferally, but something was wrong, I could see. His movements were jerky, his eyes unfocussed, his face ashen-pale in a way the light could not account for.

Overhead, the storm moved in our direction, thunder cracking across the sky, chasing a lightning flash that lit the clearing as bright as day. In the darkness afterwards, I saw that Yuber's pinned hand was glowing. Only then did I understand, and I watched with a kind of fascination as the glow quickly became a flare brighter than the lightning.

There is much speculation as to what exactly happens to a True Rune once it bonds with its bearer. It is well-known that unattached Runes have a sort of non-mobile physical form, and also well-known that once bonded with a bearer, usually in the right hand, the Rune somehow leaves that physical form behind, settling instead in the bearer's flesh. But, what happens when that bonded flesh is destroyed? Does that destroy the Rune? Does it sever the link between bearer and Rune?

The answers, I learned that night, were yes...and no.

It happened so quickly that even now I only remember flashes of it. Yuber's face, contorted with pain in the garish purple-red-white light that seethed up Pesmerga's sword like a snake.

That same light arcing along the blade like lightning, throwing Pesmerga twenty feet back to crumple into a tree as if he were no more than a rag doll.

An image of *something* rising into the air above Yuber's prone form, crackling and spitting like ball lightning, its core dark and writhing, fighting itself as it expanded, then contracted, an inverted explosion.

I closed my eyes against the brightness but couldn't keep it out. I could still see it, even though I knew that I shouldn't be able to. It writhed behind my eyelids, a snake biting its own tail.

It tore itself in two.

I knew a moment of sheer terror as the thing exploded, one of the snakes flying towards me, a bolt of something primal, hot and cold and dark like an abyss that made my soul recoil in screaming horror as it wrapped itself around me and, with a bolt of pain that wiped my mind clean, drove itself into my left hand.

Have you ever gone mad? It's rather indescribable.

There was an almost painless snapping, a prying loose of the underpinnings of reason, and the hot, electric-acid wash of the Rune rushed in, corroding, melting, changing, transforming in the darkest kind of alchemy. Knowledge fluttered and shredded, no longer a neat library, but a melded, running whole, organic, fluid, shooting through me in a quicksilver flood. The walls of reason melted under its assault, the neat maze of my mind shattered, formless for one weightless moment before flowing like heavy water into the circle of the Ouroboros, the self-devouring serpent. It was a pain like nothing I'd ever experienced, but fear fled as the bonds of logic burst, and I felt my self, tenuous thing that it was, calcify, bonding itself over the Rune's bones as a second skin. No longer just one, no longer important, no longer with ambition and agenda and armored by reason, but a scale on the back of the great serpent.

For one glorious, shuddering instant, I opened my eyes and could SEE it, curling through the matter around me, could see in the ground beneath my feet the curling twist of the serpent's hide, in the air the serpent's breath, in the water the serpent's cold-acid-hot blood, and in the light that still crackled around me the serpent's need, flowing and writhing and WANTING, a desire, a hunger to consume like nothing a human could ever conceive, let alone contain.

My sight snagged, drawn by the coalescing light, and I saw the sinuous twine of the other serpent, curling itself around Yuber like a lover, sinking its fangs into his neck. He stiffened, face a mask of pain or pleasure, and the Rune rose in me like lightning or orgasm, snapping out at its other half, and we were borne along with them. Our thoughts melded and flashed and separated, oil and water, and I remembered hundreds and hundreds of years, uncounted battles, the burn of the Eightfold Rune under my skin, driving me, the feel and taste of fire and ash, the chalk of bone against my tongue, the hot rush of victory-sex-death bound in blood and blood and blood....

I don't know what he felt from me.

We hovered, twining, imperfectly bonded as our Runes writhed together, attracted, twinned, but no longer a whole, until they fell away, dumping us back into ourselves.

I had fallen, sometime during that eternal instant. My throat was raw from a scream I didn't remember making. Stones and twigs dug into my back and, with a thunderous crash, the storm broke over us. The rain was warm and felt like dripping blood as it washed over my face.

I looked up at the sound of movement, and Yuber stood over me, grinning. His right hand was whole, and as he grasped my left, the Runes pulsed between our skin, across my bones. I let him pull me up and felt air rush past my upper arm. I looked down at the bloodstained gash in my trenchcoat, now covering only whole skin. It, like Yuber's right hand, was healed.

Yuber laughed, his hands hard as he pulled me close, his mouth hot and tasting of thunder and blood and steel laid against my tongue.

The Rune shifted in me, a bolt of *consumedesireNEEDdevour* shooting through me, and I chuckled into Yuber's mouth, tearing my lips away to laugh long and hard before wrapping my hands in his hair and dragging him down.

We fucked each other on the muddy ground, clawing and biting and slamming each other into submission. It was the first time that I'd ever taken him, and he made me fight for every hard, tight, perfect thrust, flipping me over even as I came forever into him, laughing. He pinned me down and stabbed into me, his body hard and hot and lightning-gilded as I clawed his back and thunder crashed all around us.

It was only much later that either of us wondered what the hell had happened to Pesmerga. When we looked, he was still crumpled against the tree where the Rune had thrown him. Yuber ripped off his helmet and his eyes were fixed and dead, his head lolling on his broken neck. Yuber howled with laughter, kicking him for good measure.

I looked up at the sky, smiling into the storm, feeling newborn.

Death. Sex. Blood. Power in such simple things.

And that was the beginning of the end.


End file.
